Signal lamps
The admin lamp and the kitchen lamp: how they work, what to buy, how to connect them and what to do if a lamp stops responding.
A lamp closes a gap the screen does not: a person next to the tablet is not yet a person who has looked at the tablet. The admin went to the kitchen, the sound is off, the tab is open — and the order is just waiting.
There are two lamps, and they work differently.
The admin lamp
It stays lit while there is an order nobody has dealt with.
- it is lit by orders that come from outside: from the website, from the built-in POSitive website, from a neighbouring venue (“Order for a neighbour”) and from connected services. Dining-room receipts do not light it;
- it stays quiet for the first 15 seconds after an order arrives (adjustable). Dealt with right away — it never lights up;
- not dealt with — it blinks and keeps blinking;
- it goes out for only two reasons: the order is accepted, or the admin pressed “Seen it”.
The panel marks an order as viewed by itself as soon as the “New” tab is in front of the others. But that only means the tablet is on — perhaps forgotten in the back room. That is why a second, deliberate mark is needed: the “Seen it” button. It appears exactly when the lamp lights up and not a second earlier — a button that is always there turns into background.
Auto-accept does not light the lamp: an order the register accepted by itself needs nobody to deal with it. If auto-accept could not accept an order — for example, the guest did not choose a required add-on — the lamp lights up as usual.
An order older than six hours no longer keeps the lamp on: a forgotten “new” order from yesterday would keep it burning until morning and teach people not to look at it.
If the server restarted, the lamp returns to the right state by itself within a few seconds: every 5 seconds the system checks it against the orders.
The kitchen lamp
A short pulse — 7 seconds by default, adjustable.
It fires:
- when an order arrives from the website, from a neighbouring venue or from a connected service — the kitchen knows about it even before the admin gets to it;
- every time new items go to the kitchen: “To kitchen”, “Accept and send to kitchen”, auto-accept. This applies to any receipt, including a dining-room order, so an extra order gives another flash;
- when a kitchen ticket is reprinted (“Print again”).
If you press “To kitchen” and there are no new items in the receipt, there is no flash.
The pulse is short on purpose: constant blinking in the kitchen disrupts work.
The system only supplies power: on — the lamp blinks in its own mode, off — it goes dark. So pick a lamp that blinks by itself when power is applied, not one that just shines.
One lamp for both roles
The same lamp can be set in both fields — if the venue has only one lamp, this works. Then after the kitchen flash the lamp goes out, and a few seconds later it lights up again if the order is still waiting for the admin. “Blinked, went out, lit up again” is intended, not a fault.
What to buy
| What | Why | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| A smart Wi-Fi relay (socket or switch) | The system turns the lamp on and off through it | Works with the Smart Life / Tuya app; current with headroom — 10 A is more than enough |
| A signal beacon lamp | The signal itself | Must blink by itself when powered on; brightness to suit the room |
No special “branded” equipment is needed: these are ordinary household devices from any electronics shop.
Where to hang them
- the admin lamp — so that it is visible from the places the admin walks off to: the way to the kitchen, the pick-up area. The whole point of the lamp is that the person is not at the tablet;
- the kitchen lamp — in the cook’s field of view, but not right in front of the eyes: it is a signal, not lighting.
How to connect
The cloud through which POSitive controls lamps is one for the whole system, and our support connects your account to it. On your side — the equipment and an account in the app.
- Install the Smart Life app and register an account with the country set to “Thailand”. The country at registration determines the cloud region: an account with another country will not connect to the POSitive cloud, and the country of an existing account cannot be changed — you would need a new one.
- Connect the relay to the venue’s Wi-Fi in this account — by normal pairing, like any smart device.
- Write to support: we will send a QR code, which you scan in the Smart Life app. This connects the account to the POSitive cloud. It is done once.
- Get the device address in the app: device card → ✎ → “Device information” → Device ID.
- Enter the address in the back office: “Settings → Venue → Signal lamps”, separately for the admin lamp and the kitchen lamp.
- Set the admin lamp delay and the kitchen lamp pulse duration.
- Press “Blink now” and look at the lamp — this is the main check. The “Check” button additionally tells you whether the device is online.
An empty address means the venue does not have this lamp. That is normal, not a fault: the signal simply is not sent.
If a lamp stops responding
The “Check” and “Blink now” buttons answer with a specific reason — read it, it saves an hour:
| What it says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Tuya keys are not set on the server | Lamps are turned off at the system level — write to support |
| This venue has no lamp address set | The field is empty. The system did not even contact the cloud |
| The Tuya cloud does not answer | No connection to the lamp cloud. This is not a venue setting — write to support |
| The device is offline | The relay has no power or has not connected to Wi-Fi |
“Could not blink”, and below it permission deny | The relay is not in the account connected to the POSitive cloud: it was added to a different Smart Life account, or the account was registered with a different country. Write to support |
A smart relay changes networks only by pairing again: reset it (hold the button for about five seconds until it blinks fast), then “Add device” in the app — into the same account that is connected to the POSitive cloud. Then there is no need to contact support again. After re-pairing the Device ID may change — check it in the app and enter it again. This is exactly what the complaint “I moved the lamp to another Wi-Fi and it stopped working” looked like.
What the lamp does not do
The lamp is an auxiliary signal. It depends on the internet and on someone else’s cloud, so it never blocks a sale: if the signal did not go out, orders, printing and payment work as usual.
If an order arrived while the server was restarting, there may be no kitchen flash for its arrival. This does not affect the admin lamp: it checks against the orders and lights up by itself.